Foul Play? Controversial Bitcoin Billionaire Drowns in Costa Rica

This is a very sad bit of news, and my heart goes out to his loved ones.

According to reports, the Bitcoin billionaire and blogger Mircea Popescu was found dead by the Costa Rican authorities.

Popescu was 41, and is alleged to have drowned.

I wonder if this was an accident, or if foul play is involved. Popescu was controversial at the best of times—often being labeled as ‘toxic’ by those who didn’t share his views.

Perhaps a disgruntled online confrontation, or financial motivation could have led to his drowning, but again at this point I am just going with the theory that this was purely accidental.

Here’s what we currently know:

RIP Mircea Popescu (1980 – 2021)

Called "The Father of Bitcoin Toxicity" by some, Mircea will endure as one of #Bitcoin's most vilified figures and inarguably one of its greatest philosophers.

In memory, a collection of my favorite MP quotes below. pic.twitter.com/KMoIfKGeSk

— RIZZO (@pete_rizzo_) June 27, 2021

Either Mircea Popescu is sitting with John McAfee in the Bahamas, or shit is about to get all kinds of fucked up.

— Shinobi (@brian_trollz) June 27, 2021

Market Watch had this to say:

Billionaire bitcoin owner Mircea Popescu has reportedly died, leaving behind a cache of virtual currency and a controversial crypto legacy.

The bitcoin pioneer, who was believed to own over $1 billion in the world’s No. 1 crypto, making him, at the time, one of the asset’s larger single-holders, died off the coast of Costa Rica, according to a Spanish-language publication, Teletica.com, which reported last week that a foreigner had drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, describing him as a 41-year old of Polish origin.

Popescu was viewed as a pioneer in digital assets and one of the earliest adopters. An article in Bitcoin Magazine written by Pete Rizzo said that Popescu was known for starting MPEx, a Bitcoin securities exchange, around the same time as the Coinbase Global COIN launched.

After reading the news about Mircea Popescu's death and how he owned a fuck ton of $BTC, I was waiting to see if someone would have the worst take to tweet about scarcity lol.
And as expected, Pomp delivered lol pic.twitter.com/nNJpCHwsD3

— Devchart 👨🏻‍💻 (@devchart) June 27, 2021

Mircea Popescu died last week. He was a thoroughly unlikeable person, who taught me so much about Bitcoin. I think the thing that will stick with me is his insistence that noobs lurk for 6 months before saying anything. We’d have stronger communities if this was a tradition.

— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) June 27, 2021

Bein Crypto added:

The polarizing figure in the cryptocurrency industry leaves behind a checkered legacy along with a treasure chest of virtual currency. The Romanian-born Popescu founded Polimedia, an enterprise resource planning firm, in 2007. What he is really known for, however, is his life after beginning work as a Bitcoin blogger in 2012. This led him to be known as one of the pioneers and early adopters of digital assets.

Since getting in early in cryptocurrency, it was reported that Popescu was at one point one of the largest single-holders of Bitcoin, with assets in excess of $1 billion. When bitcoin peaked earlier this year, Popescu’s holdings would have been north of $2 billion.

Popescu is also known for being behind MPEx, a bitcoin securities exchange he started back in 2012. It became a hub for bitcoin IPOs and brought him a lot of negative attention from the SEC among others. He went on to loudly criticized Ripple and Bitcoin Savings and Trust because he viewed them as scams. The latter turned out to be right about. 

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